


a burden to bear

by janetcarter



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Gen, Mistakes, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/pseuds/janetcarter
Summary: Helen once believed she had saved that young boy on the Moors all those years ago, but Henry didn't seem to agree.
Relationships: Henry Foss & Helen Magnus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	a burden to bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SammyFlower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammyFlower/gifts).



Sometimes Helen wondered if she’d ever had the right. She found a child on the Moors, alone and afraid, and something in her cried out: _Mine._

_Take him to the Sanctuary,_ it told her. _Clean him up. Give him a warm bed. Give him all the things his kind couldn’t begin to dream of._

_Give him a life._

And so she did.

Looking back, he’d never quite fit in with anyone besides her old friend. Ashley was always a bit… rougher, contrasting his softer demeanor. And perhaps Helen herself had been too distant. He never seemed happy in clothes that weren’t accentuated with dirt or hair that wasn’t all knotted up. He’d grin and bear her attempts to bathe him and detangle matted strands, and he did the same during medical examinations. Bigfoot was the only one around whom he truly let down his guard.

She hated to admit it, but at the time… his reluctance may have bruised her ego. He was _her_ child to take care of and he _rejected_ her. He rejected everything she’d tried to grant him, but only ever when out of her sight. Once his more unruly characteristics had eased, he was so gentle… so quiet. She’d perceived it as obedience, but had it been a bad sign? Had he been a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong spot, cruelly being reshaped by the surrounding hands? 

The only thing that seemed to truly bring a smile to his face had been technology. He was so bright, so brilliant from the moment he began tinkering with wires and circuitry. But she hadn’t been able to recognize how unhappy he’d been until he showed her his true smile.

Had he been afraid that, should he not cooperate, she would drop him back off on the Moors, alone and afraid once again? 

Perhaps she _hadn’t_ had the right to cause the instability trembling beneath such a mindset. Perhaps, if she had wanted to help him she would have tried harder to find his kind. Perhaps he hadn’t been the one who had been alone and afraid, the one who thought the companionship of a young boy would soothe a century of heart-ache. 

Perhaps she’d thought the same wounds would heal by having Ashley, and when they hadn’t… she sought out stitches in the form of a lost child who would never once call her “mum.” 

If she was being honest with herself for the first time in a long, long while, there had been a tinge of selfishness in taking him home that night… and true motherhood was anything but. 


End file.
